


Pure Morning

by spikedaft



Category: Robin Lord Taylor - Fandom, The House is Burning (2006)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 20:17:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6721792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikedaft/pseuds/spikedaft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to the prompt: "What is Phil's morning routine?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pure Morning

Phil knows when he’s about to need a fix when he wakes up from a sweaty, shaky, thready sleep and finds his limbs heavy and unpleasant to move. When he goes to rub his forehead, his hands are clammy and trembling. He lies there for a moment, unmoving except for the pant of panic in his chest, and the bulging of his jaw, which he works to try to get up enough saliva to moisten the desert in his mouth and throat, and then he remembers.

Oh, right. There’s an eight-ball in the shoebox.

He leans over and swipes the edge of the cardboard, drawing the box out most of the way from under his bed, and fumbles blindly around. He feels needles and razorblades and glass pipes, but he is not finding the little baggie where his next lifeline is quietly residing. The panting is worse; now it’s tinged with panic. He jerkily explodes to his feet, letting the shabby blanket drop away from his skinny hips, which bear black Dickie’s workpants that are at least two sizes too big for him. He fell asleep fully dressed, minus his shirt, as usual. He hears the TV blaring in the living room. Jason is awake.

That absolute fuckup.

Phil charges through the doorway and staggers down the hall until he stands in the threshold of the living room. He grips the edges of the jamb with white knuckles. He sees Jason, who has the bong in his lap and is quite blissfully unaware of Phil’s predicament. A cartoon blares on the filthy TV set. Phil fixes him with the gaze of a man who has been forsaken.

“Where’s my fucking stash, asshole?” he snarls, seeing Jason’s eyes widen briefly. As nonchalant as the young man often seems, he is truly afraid of Phil when he is in withdrawal. His hands automatically fly up to defend himself, but sees that Phil is not yet on the attack, and flaps a hand at the littered coffee table. ‘It’s right there, dude. I only sampled it, it’s cool. It’s cool, okay?”

Phil stumbles forward and grabs it off the table. “Fuck. Don’t fucking do that!” There’s a dirty syringe on the table as well, parked on the edge of the ashtray along with the cigarette butts, lined up like birds on a wire. Phil grabs it, stabbing the pad of his finger in the process, and with a small hiss disappears down the hall again without another word.

Jason sighs. A new day has risen.

* * *

Once Phil is alone in his room, he combines the speed mixture in a spoon with water from a greenish old bottle of water on a nightstand, and jiggles his leg nervously as the substance cooks beneath the flame of his lighter. Finally it is ready, and he blows on the mixture to cool it. Once that is done, he draws it up into the syringe, grinning like a madman with all the teeth in his skull showing, but entirely unaware that he is doing so. He is in luck: there is a fat vein in his left arm that hasn’t yet collapsed because of his new addiction, and he accesses it with minor fuss.

And then it floods home, and his heart speeds up and evens out, and he feels the blood draining from his hot face, the sweat chilling on his forehead. The panic stops and he can breathe properly again.

“Good morning, you fucking world,” he sighs, and a new day begins.


End file.
